At what point does a Cabinet minister distorting the statistics on issues in their portfolio amount to a sackable offence? Earlier this week, Children’s Minister Karen Chhour was publicly celebrating what she depicted as the first ever reduction in reported harm at Youth Justice and Care and Prevention residences, heralded by her, a 14% drop in such harms last year. Chhour put that down to (among other things) “improved training recruitment and leadership” at Oranga Tamariki, and better induction schemes for staff.
Hold the self-congratulation. It now transpires that this was a cherry picked improvement involving only three children. There were 115 reported cases of harm in these OT managed facilities last year, down from 118 the year before – and since only 503 children were in managed facilities in the period in question, that 115 figure still amounted to a disturbing 22.8% of the total population of the children living in such residences. Keep in mind that there had been only 22 cases of reported harm in these facilities in 2021.
It is striking to see just how selectively Chhour had constructed an alleged” good news” story for the government from such a bleak situation. As Children’s Commissioner Claire Achmad told RNZ, the incidence of overall harm to those in state care had increased, with 530 incidences of harm to children reported over the past 12 months.
“…Actually there has been a higher number of findings of harm in care as well, 896 … what that tells us is that for some of these children, in fact around 21 percent, they have actually experienced multiple incidences of harm.
“We are talking about really serious harm, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect.”
For the record, as cited in Oranga Tamariki’s annual report for 2024/2025 : New Zealand has 3336 children or young people living in non-family care, of whom 5% ( i.e. 178) suffered reported harm. Of the 2,225 in the care of the wider family, 6% (i.e. 140) suffered reported harm. Among the 1,019 children returned to or remaining in home care with parents, 13% (i.e. 134) suffered reported harm. As RNZ pointed out, this is the highest proportion on record, and accounts for nearly 24% of all harm findings this year.
On that last statistic in particular, it would be more accurate to say that more of this country’s most vulnerable children are being exposed to harm (a) from the pressures arising from the cost of living crisis, and (b) from the underfunding and lack of sufficient supports to those people who are serving as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
For Karen Chhour to try (initially) to selectively paint this situation as a good news story is obscene.
Labours Investment Fund
Since Labour has been MIA for the past two years on saying what it would do differently, the recent announcement that (if elected next year) it would create an $200 million investment fund independent of government is notable, if not very laudable. Basically, a number of commercial Crown state-owned assets would be transferred into the “Future Fund” and this would serve as an investment vehicle that -unlike the Super Fund – would invest its capital only in New Zealand businesses and infrastructure.
The Future Fund would not be permitted to sell any existing state assets, and it would need explicit approval to sell any new ones that it helping bring into being. Is this really such a bold and desirable new alternative? For one thing nearly 20% of the Super Fund portfolio is already comprised of investments in local enterprises and infrastructure.
More to the point – and as this column has repeatedly argued – why is the party of Bob Semple and Michael Joseph Savage now relying on and replicating the centre-right’s aversion to the government doing the job of wealth creation, and the building of essential infrastructure?
Bernard Hickey made that point recently with his usual blunt eloquence :
My concern is that Labour remains embedded in the view it and National have shared for 40 years: that the size of Government and the size of Government debt should not be larger than 30% of GDP. With both the size of Government and its debt currently above those self-imposed, unnecessary, unjustified and failed limits, both National and Labour are still contorting themselves into states of magical thinking that private investment in infrastructure and the private provision of housing, health, education and transport would be both better for the economy than the Government doing it.
As things currently stand, Hickey concluded. “ ..This Future Fund appears to be another performative, mostly ineffective and expensive distraction from the fundamental failings of the 30/30 rule to invest in the infrastructure to support our still-fast-growth and still-ageing population, let alone catch up on decades under-investment and under-maintenance and under-replacement of both new and existing infrastructure.”
In Opposition, Labour is supposed to be offering an alternative to the current centre-right ideologies and practices. Instead, Labour appears to be more interested in devising “credible” (as in, “acceptable -to business”) simulations of the neo-liberal orthodoxy.
Protest and rebellion
For those seeking the closest thing to a good news story, the current US legal system might seem like the very last place anyone should be looking. The US Supreme Court, after all, has trampled all over a century or more of precedent in order to bestow unfettered powers on Donald Trump, to an extent the nation’s Founding Fathers had worked extremely hard to prevent. No kings, indeed.
Thankfully, not all parts of the US legal system have been so criminally supine. It is hard not to feel inspired after reading these clear and cutting words from a recent judgement issued by a three judge panel of the US 7th Circuit Appeal Court. One of these judges had been appointed by Trump, and another by George W. Bush. Yet their judgement halted Trump’s deployment by the National Guard in Chicago, and only hours ago, that block was extended.
Here’s a key passage from the initial 7th Circuit ruling:
…Political opposition is not rebellion. A protest does not become a rebellion merely because the protesters advocate for myriad legal and policy changes, are well organised, call for significant changes to the structure of the US government, use civil disobedience as a form of protest, or exercise their Second Amendment right to carry arms, as the law currently allows. Nor does a protest become a rebellion merely because of sporadic and isolated incidents of unlawful activity or even violence, committed by rogue participants in the protest. Such conduct exceeds the scope of the First Amendment [protections of free speech] of course, and law enforcement has apprehended the perpetrators accordingly. But because rebellions at least use deliberate organised violence to resist governmental authority, the problematic incidents in this record clearly fall within the considerable day-light between protected speech and rebellion.”
At a time when Trump is using the National Guard as his own private army, and is treating any opposition to his whims and wishes as being tantamount to treason…those arguments need to be made, and defended.
Sounds plus vision
Since Anna Calvi’s breakthrough single “ Don’t Beat The Girl Out of the Boy” she has expanded into television work, including writing the score for two seasons of Peaky Blinders. On this revival of Will Oldham’s classic “ I See a Darkness” she joins forces with Perfume Genius.
The extraordinary video for the song – directed by Alexander Brown – conveys both the joyous bond between the women, and the ever present threat of random violence faced by people who do not conform to hetero-normative expectations:
Talking of extraordinary videos, here’s another one, for a track from an upcoming album featuring rapper Armand Hammer and producer the Alchemist.
Via what looks like found footage, the video conveys memories of spiritual cleansing (“That old-old foot-stompin’, hand clap/That dip mе in the water “) and childhood prepping for church (“Run between from corner to sink/Every wrinkle seamed, rinsed and steamed/Starched and pressed crease, cut clean..”) and grounds those streams of memory in tradition.
For example: the line “I stride like Moko Jumblie” refers to the stilt walkers present in carnivals across the Caribbean region, and who are believed to function as spiritual guardians. Good track, perfectly realised: